G-d Is in the Rain

Remember when everyone was saying AI would replace/displace script writers and prose authors, and it was all over the news...then suddenly nobody was talking about it and it never happened? Here's part one of why...and why that was deliberate. https://t.co/gYsqcS8oBo pic.twitter.com/jP5LXnqIrm

— J. Michael Straczynski (@straczynski) May 11, 2026

The nub:

Everything created by AI is inherently objective and exterior. Upload a photo, ask for variations, and the process begins: exchange red hair for blonde, check; put the hands here instead of there, check; swap one visual background for another, check; integrate elements from an assortment of visual styles that can be, and very often have already been, explained, quantified and thus easily replicated, check-check-check...

Every aspect of that creation is culled from already existing, external sources, viewed in an objective fashion, providing examples of precedent, style, and visual presentation. The process is inherently exterior.

Writing, on the other hand, is inherently interior, and ridiculously subjective. Director Mike Nichols once said that every scene in a story is either a negotiation, a seduction or a fight. I’m not sure that’s entirely true in all cases at all times, but the core of it is right... 

AI characters populate the scene with words announcing what they want, without asides or genuine conversational give and take. Writers write for the subtext, the character insights, the profound or revealing silences.

Along those lines:

This reader comment on a NY Times column where Ross Douthat ponders that maybe God is speaking to us through A.I. is an absolute fastball on the corner with movement, and deserves a column. "Lightening was once mysterious too; mystery did not make Zeus correct" is perfect. pic.twitter.com/TseQe8Rnbi

— Kevin Van Valkenburg (@KVanValkenburg) May 11, 2026

The Douthat piece might or might not have been mischaracterized, which determination I leave as an exercise for the reader's Inner Light.  Regardless, I need to ponder a bit more about whether G-d is in the gaps, in the AI, or in the rain.

Selah.